Before We Met: A Novel (17 page)

She stood and looked around for a moment, getting a sense of the place, but then she was spotted by a smiling woman with a security card round her neck identifying her as a hospital volunteer. ‘You look lost,’ she said.

‘I’m looking for the renal ward,’ Hannah heard herself say.

‘Ninth floor.’ The woman gestured towards the lifts. ‘There’ll be a board when you get there to point you in the right direction.’

If the lobby was anything to go by, the new building was working at or near full capacity already. The place was thronged with people: staff, the walking wounded with their drips and plaster casts, and dozens of visitors. The lift she waited for stopped at every floor on its way down to the lobby and then every floor on its way back up to the ninth. Heart thumping, she stood pressed in at the back between a tall Indian man in surgical greens and a couple who, from the sound of their whispered conversation, were on their way to visit their daughter and new grandson in the maternity ward. A pair of women in their early twenties – student doctors, Hannah guessed – were talking about a ward round and she felt a pang of jealousy and painful inadequacy, as if she were excluded from a gang that everyone else belonged to. Hermione must have been like them fifteen years ago, at the beginning of her career.

On the ninth floor Hannah stepped out at the same time as the man in greens, who quickly disappeared through a pair of double doors to the right of the small lobby. The newness of the place was evident everywhere. The windows shone; the paintwork was scuff-free. A little way down the corridor a woman operating a huge industrial floor-polisher was taking care not to hit the skirting as she manoeuvred it from side to side.

Hannah paused for just a second then followed the arrow that directed her through the double doors and down a broad corridor. She would ask. There was bound to be some sort of desk or reception area and she would ask if Hermione Alleyn was working today. If she wasn’t – and really, she already knew she wasn’t – then it would be confirmed.

The wards, it seemed, all branched off this central trunk of a corridor, one set of double doors after another marked by signs at ceiling height that eliminated the need for people to stop and look at the names on the walls and thus clutter up the thoroughfare. She could see the sign for the renal ward at the far end of the corridor and kept going, passing a pair of hospital porters wheeling the bed of a tiny elderly woman with an oxygen tank resting on the expanse of undisturbed sheets at her feet. The further she went, the fewer the footsteps behind her as people peeled off into the other wards.

When she reached Renal, Hannah stopped. Through the glass panel in the left-hand door she could see a little way into the ward: first what looked like a storage bay occupied by a couple of wheelchairs and an unmade bed with a plastic mattress, and beyond that the nurses’ station. Behind the desk was a nurse in a short-sleeved tunic and a younger man, perhaps thirty or so, in a dark shirt. Through the other panel, the opposite side of the ward was visible: a line of single doors, private rooms or offices, she guessed, and an orderly with a cleaning cart. There was no one who looked like the woman online.

The man came out from behind the desk and Hannah stepped away from the glass. Anyone who saw her peering in like this would think she was one of those oddballs who got their kicks hanging round hospitals and doctors. For a moment she saw herself as if from the outside: what would the person she’d been on Saturday morning, only three days ago, think of this one, standing with her nose literally pressed against the glass for a view into the world of the woman who was sleeping with her husband? She experienced a burst of self-loathing so intense it was almost a taste in her mouth, and turned to go. Just as she did, however, a woman whose clipped approaching footsteps she’d been vaguely aware of came to a stop just behind her.

‘Excuse me. Sorry.’ She reached past to the disinfectant gel dispenser then pressed the entry button. When she was buzzed in, Hannah took some gel and followed her.

The woman went straight to the nurses’ station. Hannah hung back until she’d been directed to a patient in one of the individual rooms then approached the desk herself. The nurse behind it, a woman in her fifties with grey-blonde hair pinned into a nub of a ponytail, looked at her over a pair of gold-rimmed half-moon spectacles.

‘Can I help you?’ she asked, in a brisk voice.

‘It’s just a question, actually. I wondered if Hermione Alleyn was in today?’

‘Ms Alleyn?’ On the desk behind her the telephone started ringing. The nurse looked at it then at a colleague, who pulled a quick apologetic expression over the shoulder of the visitor she’d been collared by. The nurse looked back at Hannah. ‘May I ask why you want to know?’

‘I . . .’ For a moment her mind emptied. The nurse raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m from the florist,’ said Hannah. ‘I’ve got a delivery for her downstairs but, well, it’s big and I wanted to make sure I was in the right place and she was actually here before . . .’

The telephone stopped ringing but started again almost immediately. The nurse gave it another harried glance. ‘Fine, yes. She’s in today but she’s in theatre at the moment. The list isn’t long so I should think they’ll be done shortly. If you bring the flowers up, we can keep them behind the desk here.’

‘Great, thanks.’ Hannah nodded and made her way to the door again. She tugged at the handle three or four times before seeing the release pad on the wall at wheelchair height. Back outside in the corridor, she walked until she was out of view from the glass panels.

Her mind was racing. What was going on? Hermione Alleyn
was
here. She was here and working in the operating theatre, which meant that wherever Mark actually was – New York, Rome, Ulan Bator – she wasn’t with him. Unless, Hannah thought, this was the wrong woman after all. She remembered the Cambridge connection, though, the fact that they would have been at St Botolph’s at the same time – what was the likelihood Mark would know two Hermione Alleyns? No, it had to be her, this one. So what did that mean? That he was in London somewhere, holed up at her house and waiting for her to come home? No: not his style. And anyway, if he were in London, he’d be at the office, wouldn’t he? There was no way he’d be here and not go to work, especially with a buy-out imminent.

Just for a minute she let herself consider the possibility that he wasn’t having an affair, that Hermione had been calling him for some other reason. What? What could they be talking about? But then, if she was just an old friend from Cambridge, why had Hannah never heard of her? Why had Mark never mentioned her? And why had Neesha been so defensive?
He always closes his door when he speaks to her
.

A little further on, near the end of the corridor, there was a shallow alcove with a bench in it. Blue winter light spilled from the window behind on to the floor. Sitting there, Hannah thought, she’d be more or less out of sight of anyone approaching but she’d have a good view. She’d wait until Hermione came up from theatre and talk to her then. She wasn’t going to leave here now until she found out was going on.

She walked to the bench and sat down, positioning herself at the far end so she could see clearly. The ward hadn’t seemed especially busy but a steady stream of people came and went, staff and visitors, and her head snapped up at each new set of footsteps, the tap-tap of heels and the softer whisper of men’s shoes, the squeak of trainers. She remembered waiting in the arrivals hall at JFK, how she used to watch the doors like a puppy waiting for its owner to come home, and was filled with disgust at herself. What a stupid bloody idiot she’d been.

Her bag vibrated against her thigh and when she got out her BlackBerry, she saw Mark’s name in her inbox.

Han sweetheart, I’m so sorry we didn’t manage to talk over the weekend. I’m getting some work done this morning, the meeting’s at two this afternoon, and then I’m JFK-bound, coming home. Can’t wait to see you – I’ve missed you like mad. Prepare to be squeezed to within an inch of your life . . .

She read it again, and then, incensed –
I’ve missed you like mad?
– she deleted it and tossed the phone back into her bag. When she looked up again, a woman in surgical greens with brown hair cut into a shoulder-length bob was coming through the double doors at the far end of the corridor, walking with energetic, economical steps that were barely audible even when she was ten feet away. She was frowning slightly, squinting against the cold light that streamed through the windows and made her look even more tired, but it was the woman Hannah had seen online, no doubt about it, slightly protruding ears and all. As she approached the doors to the ward, Hannah stood up, slung her bag over her shoulder and moved quickly to intercept her. ‘Excuse me? Hermione Alleyn?’

The woman stopped and the frown was replaced by an expression of polite professionalism. She gave a small smile carefully calibrated – after years of being accosted by anxious relatives, Hannah guessed – to look approachable but not too much so. She was sucking a mint that did nothing to mask the smell of cigarette smoke that hung around her.

‘Yes?’

‘I’m Hannah Reilly,’ she said, watching the woman carefully. The neutral expression, however, remained.

‘Mark’s wife.’

A second passed and then a look of pure horror crossed Hermione Alleyn’s face. It was fleeting but unmistakable: her eyes widened and stared but then, just as quickly, she recovered herself and smiled. ‘Mark? God, how is he? Is he here?’ She looked around, as if expecting to see him coming along the corridor.

Hannah felt a hot rush of anger. How dare she? How much of a moron did they think she was? ‘Look,’ she said. ‘Don’t bother with the pretence. I know something’s going on.’

Another momentary flicker of panic and then composure again. ‘Going on? I don’t know what . . .’

‘Between you two. I know you’re . . . in touch.’ She paused a second, gave the innuendo room to breathe. ‘I know you’ve been calling him at his office – his assistant told me. And I know he’s been lying to me about his whereabouts.’

Hermione shook her head a little. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘but I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong end of the stick somewhere. There’s nothing going on between Mark and me. We were at college together in Cambridge – you know that already, I’m sure – but that’s all the . . .’

‘Don’t,’ Hannah said, her voice coming out louder than she’d expected. It echoed off the corridor’s shiny surfaces and Hermione glanced around, nervous, no doubt, in case her colleagues heard. Well, stuff her, thought Hannah. Why should she lower her voice? She wasn’t going to sit back and take this. ‘Just don’t,’ she said. ‘I’ve had enough of being lied to and patronised – it’s time for the truth. Something’s going on and I’m not going to leave here until I find out what it is.’

There was a click and the ward door came open. The dark head of the man in the grey shirt appeared. ‘Hermione?’

‘Hi, Robbie.’

‘Hi.’ His eyes moved quickly between them. ‘I . . . Everything all right?’

‘Fine.’ Hermione gave a single terse nod. ‘Thanks. I’ll be there in a second.’

Robbie looked at Hannah appraisingly then bobbed his head back in. He stepped aside but she could see the elbow of his shirt through the glass panel. Hermione saw it as well. She stepped away from the door and put her hand on Hannah’s arm, drawing her back. ‘Okay, look,’ she said quietly, ‘you’re right, we have been in touch a couple of times recently.’

Hannah felt the confirmation as a physical sensation, cold washing over her.

‘No, it’s not that – it’s not what you think.’

‘Then what is it?’

Hermione cast an anxious glance down the corridor. ‘We were talking about Nick.’

‘Nick?’
Nicola
, said the voice in her ear.
It’s not her, it’s someone else, a mutual friend, an old flame
.

Hermione, though, was looking at her as if she were stupid. ‘His brother,’ she said.

‘His brother? What? They don’t even talk. Why would you . . .?’

‘Because,’ Hermione said, as if it were obvious, ‘he’s about to get out of prison, isn’t he?’

Chapter Eleven

‘What about your brother?’
she’d asked that Friday night.

Her head had been on Mark’s shoulder, his skin warm and faintly damp against her cheek from the heat they’d generated in bed and the overzealous steam heating in her old building. She’d felt a tiny tug of suction as he’d turned and dislodged her, a kiss goodbye.

‘What about him?’

Happy that he was coming to Malvern for Christmas and keen to avoid making him sad by probing too deeply into his family when he’d just agreed to be thrust into the centre of hers – whom she still had the luxury of moaning about – Hannah had let the subject drop at the time, but the following morning when she’d been making scrambled eggs in her glamorous corridor of a kitchen, coffee pot balanced precariously on top of the microwave to make space for two plates side by side on the tiny patch of countertop, the White Stripes playing on wfuv with backing vocals from Mark in the shower next door, she’d thought about how his face had changed. His relaxed openness had vanished in a second, replaced by a barrier. When he’d looked at her, his eyes had been hard.
What about him?

What had he told her about his brother before that? She’d stirred the eggs and tried to think back. She remembered the conversation very early on, the second time they’d met up deliberately in the city, when he’d told her that he’d lost both his parents when he was in his twenties, his father of complications after a stomach operation, his mother only a year later of breast cancer detected too late. They’d been at the Mulberry Street Bar then, his suggestion because she’d told him she loved
Donnie Brasco
and he couldn’t believe she didn’t know that scenes of it had been shot there. The temperature had been pushing a hundred all day and they’d sat at one of the high pedestal tables and drank glasses of beer that ran with condensation despite the roaring air con. ‘How about siblings?’ she’d asked him. ‘Do you have any?’